foomench wrote:I also have considered trying to adapt it for another use, but the time to tweak output seems a little prohibitive to me. Here is my use case: Best of show judging at a beer competition. All beers are first judged in their individual categories. Then the best of each category goes on to a best of show round. Now we have some large number (say 30) of beers to pick from, blind. But for each we have an entry number and a style (alphanumeric indicator and description, like "4A: Belgian Golden Strong").

Is “4A: Belgian Golden Strong” a category? If so, could you use the likes of the following?

The vote-recorder sheets would be used. Do you need a separate v-r sheet each, with column titles being points categories (nose, taste, gets you sauced quickly, etc)? That fits into the current code, though some re-arrangements of parameters might help.

If not, what is known? Is it that there will be only one ‘4’ beer, and it could be 4A or 4B or 4C or … or 4Z?

One PDF for each number of glasses; glasses sheets and TN sheets at end so user chooses last page to print and thereby chooses effective number of people. Or have 14 people on the voting sheets, and one set of glasses/TN pages with a blank name: print as many copies as needed.

One PDF for each number of glasses; glasses sheets and TN sheets at end so user chooses last page to print and thereby chooses effective number of people. Or have 14 people on the voting sheets, and one set of glasses/TN pages with a blank name: print as many copies as needed.

Yes, that would work, but includes the user picking and downloading a file from somewhere. Compare that to an App on an iPhone (or, if you are staunchly Glenn, a lesser device) >> launch >> x drinks >> y drinkers >> print. No having to find the files, no choosing the correct one, no downloading, just six or seven clicks and you have a complete set of placemats.

I really stirred this pot it seems. In my beer use case, we don't need score sheets, aren't really concerned about drinker names ... Detailed notes have already been recorded and entered into the competition software for the 300 or 1000 beers judged. (There are a couple different programs out there for this.) This is the final elimination round and we just want to keep from mixing things up. 3 or 5 judges take sheets of paper and stewards pour the BOS qualifiers. Judges sample everything. "Got anything you would knock out?" A whole bunch of beers go away if there are no objections. Then people start ranking them and talking about them, taking another sip, sitting them back down. You might scribble something on your grid/placement. More things get knocked out ...

I'll see if I can draw up one of these improvised placemats for inspiration some time.

Requests have improved the software. I need to understand the request and its generality before knowing what to do with it.

• Do you know that there will be on ‘4’ beer?
• Do you know that there will be on ‘4A’ beer?
• Is there any level of the hierarchy of specification such that you know, at that level of ontology, how many beers there will be?

foomench wrote:In my beer use case, we don't need score sheets, aren't really concerned about drinker names ... Detailed notes have already been recorded and entered into the competition software for the 300 or 1000 beers judged. (There are a couple different programs out there for this.) This is the final elimination round and we just want to keep from mixing things up. 3 or 5 judges take sheets of paper and stewards pour the BOS qualifiers. Judges sample everything. "Got anything you would knock out?" A whole bunch of beers go away if there are no objections. Then people start ranking them and talking about them, taking another sip, sitting them back down. You might scribble something on your grid/placement. More things get knocked out ...

A perfect use for example 2:

1. Launch Placemat Wizard and choose "Include Drink Names"
2. Enter a list of drinks (max 50?) in one box, one name per line.
3. Enter the number of drinkers.
4. Print.

Requests have improved the software. I need to understand the request and its generality before knowing what to do with it.

By your own admission elsewhere in this thread writing a wizard is not your forte. You therefore do not need to know what to do with this request other than to give a stable version of the code to someone who does.

Requests have improved the software. I need to understand the request and its generality before knowing what to do with it.
• Do you know that there will be on ‘4’ beer?
• Do you know that there will be on ‘4A’ beer?
• Is there any level of the hierarchy of specification such that you know, at that level of ontology, how many beers there will be?

The general answer to all the above is no. There need not be any hierarchy maintained, but ordering would be nice. The style guidelines are set (but subject to update, as the 2015 just came out to supersede the 2008), but at any given competition categories may be split or combined based on the number of entries. A BOS judging may have one "11" English Bitter, which happens to be an "11A" Ordinary Bitter, but there could be both an 11A and an 11B, or no 11s at all. Some competitions exclude certain categories, and judges in the early rounds may choose not to award a 1st place, which means nothing from that pool will advance.

I might volunteer to make a wizard some day, but it won't be too soon. The next beer competition that I will help out with, beyond just judging, will probably be next March. That might be the time I work on something.

A question/request; I am hosting a tasting next month where I will not know the names of the attendees in advance. I wish to print sets of glasses and tasting note pages for each attendee, and it would seem sensible to provide a location (on both pages?) for the attendee to put their initials/name.

Various solutions come to mind - I could potential use blank definitions for the attendees initials, or perhaps "....." or "Name: .........." in the initials field. Before I start testing what might look best, is there already an intended method/approach for this scenario?

Usually bugs are fixed silently. But notice should be given of the most recent bug fix: the code used an incorrect size for A4.

Erroneously I had believed that A4 was 250mm÷√√2 by 250mm×√√2, which ≈ 210.224mm×297.302mm. No, not so: in a different conversation mention was made of ISO 216, which iteratively rounds the A and B paper sizes to integer numbers of mm. A4 is actually 210mm×297mm, precisely, the area of which is 0.208% smaller than that in the previous code (0.06237m² rather than 0.0625m²).

The code (HTML, PostScript) now uses the slightly smaller but on-standard A and B page sizes, and hence radii and titles and such like features are also slightly smaller.

jdaw1 wrote:Is it a good idea? (See “§ External Links” area in image.)

I would say that it would only be worthwhile if it might be used. If looking to find details of an old tasting, I expect most people would be more likely to search the forum than to search an archive of post-tasting-modified placemat sheets. However, I also see no down-side except for the whole "placemats should serve as a permanent record and therefore should not be altered after the event" argument, where I am outnumbered; once post-tasting update of placemats is allowed, I see no problem with this, but also little likelihood of use.